GUIDE TO HONG KONG´S BEST PHOTO LOCATIONS part.1

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Hong Kong is full with photo opportunities, from street, architectural, food, cityscape photography, you name it! But before we get into photography let me explain a little bit about Hong Kong as my personal experience.

Hong Kong is a vibrant city, you will find a diversity of cultures, I used to see HK as “where the west meets east”, some sort of balance if you want to see it that way, where you find a mixture of  west culture like English pubs where you could have a nice European beer on the tap and have some fish and chips to complement your drinks, I know, I know, is not the same as being in the UK, but all the expats out there living in China or SE Asia would understand the feeling; or you could also find the most amazing Asian food, HK is best known for their amazing dim sum and Cantonese dishes; in my years living in China mainland, HK was like an scape valve for a much needed break when I still had months to go before going back home for the holidays.

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Hong Kong is a fascinated city, but it comes with its challenges when it comes to photography, most of the days you are going to battle with fog or haze that will cut down the clarity for those panoramic views of the city. This is a city that you’ll have to re visit many times to get the perfect shot, but if you want to raise your chances of good weather conditions, go visit HK in the summer months during the monsoon season, you might get wet (correction, you’ll definitely get wet) but that’s when you’ll have a higher chance to get those epic skies with thunderstorm clouds that adds drama to your photographs, and if it rains, the atmosphere gets cleaned up and the clarity will improve exponentially.

This city is very popular place to photograph, so you will have to get extra early to get the prime spots and stake your claim for your shots, even though there are lots of tourists, only a few spend the time to get there before everybody, the ones you’ll be racing against will be the local photographers (and there are plenty) and they have the upper hand as they know the places really well, they can move faster as they speak the local language, and they have scouted the same places many times before you, so there is no guessing for them; one thing that I would like to highlight is that they are very aware of the other photographers, they are respectful and they try their best not to disturb you or your equipment, cannot say the same about the tourists though.

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Talking a little bit about gear, if you are hardcore like me you can carry a big back pack full of gear, two camera bodies, two tripods, 4 lenses, cable release, filters, head lamp, cleaning cloths, extra batteries, and so on, you could do that for sunrise and for sunset photos. I usually do this because I might not get another opportunity to get this shot, so I want to increase my success rate and have a couple of compositions when possible, so this is a personal choice. During the day I would definitely recommend to take only one body and one lens for scouting or street photography to enjoy your holiday. Hong Kong is not as big as Tokyo let’s say, but you will have to move a lot, unfortunately, the iconic are far apart from each other and so traveling light is something wise to do; and because I’m not wise, I always travel with loads gear on my back, the result is that by the end of the day I can’t give one more step and I say to myself that will never do it again and that I won’t be able to wake up for the next sunrise shoot, but then, next morning after a good night sleep I do it again!!

Anyway, the basic gear that I recommend to bring is your camera body, one wide lens (one long lens optional but highly recommended), or instead you could use one of those do it all lenses like a 28mm – 300 mm, although 28 mm for me is not wide enough most of the times, and of course your tripod, anything else is just vanity.

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So, enough of this chit chat, let’s talk about photography, in this blog I’ll be focusing on landscape and cityscape photography and all things that will help you to get those beautiful and epic shots, like, when is best to shoot, some suggested compositions and when possible, how to avoid the crowds, or at least how to dodge the masses.

So, in the next blog I’ll be talking about of my TOP 5 photo spots to shoot in Hong Kong.

 
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